what i got from the lecture

what I got from the lecture and the handout we got is that Semiotics is built up of 3 things Index, icon and symbol for me the examples of index (smoke signifies fire) and icon (a realistic painting of president Kennedy) helped me understand loads but symbol wasn't explained very well till the lecture where I felt that I understood it more to me it was a sign that a group of people understand for example crossing over your middle finger and your ring finger with your backhand shown forward symbolizes the west coast and a certain amount of people will understand this and the significance of it this is my understanding of symbol another example I could think of is the banners in an army they represent there allegiance or nationality etc. without semiotics there would be miscommunication all the time as there would be no way of showing each other what we mean even language is a type of semiotics. basically for me semiotics is a substitute used for explaining and communicating something in a way that a group of people can understand eg language or and image etc.